


send me your location.

by LovelyVerisimilitude



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Arguing, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Light Angst, Long-Distance Relationship, Not Beta Read, rachel is black and percy is afro-latino good talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27423604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyVerisimilitude/pseuds/LovelyVerisimilitude
Summary: “I think we need to talk,” Rachel says, unhurried. “About the other day.”Percy’s grip stiffens, and his throat almost closes up when he says, “What’s there to talk about?”“I just feel like―like we’re drifting apart.” She turns to him, her mouth physically frowning, her brows crinkled in concentration. “And I hate that.”(MODERN AU― Rachel’s been away, Percy’s been stuck at home, and somehow, neither of them seem to get along like they used to.)
Relationships: Rachel Elizabeth Dare/Percy Jackson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26





	send me your location.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackpercy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackpercy/gifts).



> i. no beta reader.
> 
> ii. check out the art i made for this on [tumblr](https://lovely-verisimilitude.tumblr.com/post/634074582045851648/send-me-your-locationfocus-ship-percy).
> 
> iii. based on [this](https://lovely-verisimilitude.tumblr.com/post/632451783905689600/what-do-you-think-perachel-would-argue-over).
> 
> iv. we're all going to pretend that clarion academy is in washington. oh, and the rating is there just for the one use of fuck, but idk if i should change it.

Percy’s at the airport when he spots Rachel emerging from the crowd.

He recognizes her instantly, because, frankly, it hasn’t been that long since they’ve seen each other―they FaceTimed, earlier, late at night, and she had fallen asleep, her cheek squished against her pillow―but this is the first time in roughly a few months since they’ve seen each other _in person._ Tangibly _there._

“Are you serious?” Percy had asked her on the phone. “Really? You’re―you’re coming back?”

“Yeah,” she said. He can hear the smile in her voice. “I’m finished with Clarion Academy and, uh, I wanted―I want to stay. With you. For good this time.”

Now he watches her head swish back and forth, fleetingly searching. Her curly, red-brown hair is tied in a half-up ponytail. She has on a sleeveless, sky-blue collared shirt, punctiliously tucked into a navy pencil skirt. Percy has to do a tiny double-take when he sees that. It looks peculiar on her.

Rachel wanders around the floor of the airport, fixating her gaze on everything and everyone but him, and for a moment―for a devastatingly anxious moment―he’s worried that if she doesn’t notice him, she’ll be swallowed up by the hoards of people, and he’ll _miss his chance._ Slip right through his fingers.

But then―

But then she sees him.

And he smiles.

# 

* * *

They manage to find a way to fit each other into their lives.

Percy doesn’t have the guts to ask her to move into an apartment with him because he still wants to live with his mom and Paul and his baby sister, but she comes over sometimes. Rachel visits and paints that one photograph of Estelle beaming at the camera, splashes watercolor and strokes the city skyline when she lazes on the balcony, and she sketches and re-sketches self portraits, charcoal drawings, and still life paintings. She sketches him, too.

Percy has the urge to observe her drawings, comprehending how expertly well-crafted they are. How much she’s improved.

But she also looks back at her drawings, the ones she created from her dormitory in Clarion Academy. He catches glimpses of them, artworks he’s never seen before. They’re cold. Bleak. Grave. They’re clouds, rain, sometimes it’s the same picture over and over and over again. A girl perched on the window, gazing at nothing but a blank space.

Percy sprawls himself on the couch by Rachel, barely awake, almost feigning unconsciousness, and he sees them. Sees the crumpled, brittle pages where she erased too mercilessly, the faint pencil lines, the somber cool colors that seem so distinctly not-Rachel. 

He thinks that’s when he starts noticing.

# 

* * *

Apparently, she enjoys tea now.

Specifically white jasmine tea. With a rose. A real, edible, harvested-from-the-ground magenta rose.

Rachel sprinkles velvety petals in her cup when the morning sunlight filters through the blinds, the kitchen soundless all except for the clink of Rachel’s spoon as she stirs her tea. She’s in his shirt. She hasn’t brushed her hair yet. Her elbow reclines against the kitchen counter, giving him frequent, brief glances.

“What?” she asks him sluggishly. “Why are you staring at me? Do you want coffee?”

“Oh,” he says, blinking. He rubs his eyes. “No, not really.”

“Cool. Tea?”

“I’ll pass.”

The silence between them is tense. Uncomfortable. _Unbearable._ He can slice through it with a butter knife. She pulls away, then, humming an off-key melody to a song he doesn’t know. That he _should_ know.

Rachel sips her tea.

# 

* * *

There’s a baking fundraiser.

The Jackson’s kitchen is a compact room with freezing cold tiled floors, circular light fixtures, wooden cabinets, and drawers with crooked handles. Potted plants are flourishing over their multicolored vases. It smells warm and toasty, the aroma of rich, milky cocoa and creamy vanilla wafting through the air. Dozens of white ceramic plates have towers of blue chocolate-chip cookies heedfully piled on top of them.

“So,” Percy says while he’s mixing a bowl of cookie batter, “what’s Clarion Academy like?”

“What?” Rachel asks, looking up from the half-decorated cake, swirls of buttercream frosting coating the surface.

“Clarion Academy,” Percy repeats. “Did you like it?”

She goes silent for a moment, then says, “It was good.”

He waits. She squeezes another frosted rose, icing smearing her arms. When she doesn’t say anything, he frowns. “Just good?”

“Yep.”

“Nothing... _else?_ ”

“Oh, uh,” she mumbles, her eyes darting around the kitchen, planting themselves onto different areas, never lingering in the same location for more than three seconds. “Oh, the cookies are almost done!” Rachel says, hurried, depositing her piping bag to seize an oven mitt.

Percy lets her deflect, but he can’t help but notice that she's never done that before. Never ignored a question. Rachel’s talkative; he can point to an empty wall and she’ll describe it with such overwhelming detail and elucidation and _meaning_ that the second time he looks at it, it’s a whole new wall. She rambles, her tongue slipping, her words bleeding into one another, but never―never _just_ one word.

Good, she had said to him. _Good._

# 

* * *

He sees the sketches more often now.

There’s a flower. Estelle. Him.

A girl sitting by a window with nothing to stare at.

# 

* * *

“You’re _moving?”_ he quotes in disbelief, the reality of the situation washing over him, leaving his skin numb and ice-cold. His back is slanted against the wall, his hands folded. She’s perceiving the sky as it darkens to purple, her eyes staring intensely at the horizon. Like she’s searching. “To _Paris?”_

“Yeah,” Rachel says swiftly, using her aggravatingly one-syllabled tone, something he suspects she learned from her time in that private, prestigious school. “To study art.”

“But―” Percy stops short, his voice defeated. “You _just_ got to New York.”

She doesn’t meet his eyes. Her elbows lean further against the balcony railing. “Yeah. I’m leaving. I can’t―I don’t want to stay here.” 

“But you seemed…” His voice falters, and his teeth sink into his tongue. “Why not?”

 _“Because,”_ Rachel bites out, enunciating the word, piercingly sharp and fragile and raspy as it tumbles from her mouth, irritatedly short. It scratches at his nerves. She never did this during their FaceTimes.

“Because _what?”_

“Because I need to leave, _okay?”_ And just like that, the air between them seems to fracture, like a ballon just bursted, like an elastic band just fucking _snapped,_ and Percy doesn’t think it’s his imagination when she grips the railing until her knuckles pale. “France isn’t that far away―”

“There’s a whole _ocean_ between New York and France!”

“So what? We can’t make this work?”

The question catches him by surprise. “Okay, I _never_ said that―”

“Seemed like it,” she mutters resentfully.

“I’m _not_ saying that.”

“Then what _are_ you saying?”

“I’m _saying_ that―that―” His words become garbled and muddled and incoherent, so he stops to collect his thoughts. To understand. Percy breathes slowly. “Just―how long will you be in France? Until you think you can come back?”

Her shoulders go slack. “I―I don’t―” Rachel rips her gaze away from the sky, her fingers clutching her hair. “I don’t _know,_ okay? I haven’t―I―” She breathes in and out. Gradually. Calming herself down. Then, in a quiet voice, she says, “I need to take a walk.”

He doesn’t try to prevent her from leaving.

# 

* * *

Percy checks his phone at least twice every thirty minutes.

He stares at his empty voicemail box and the last text he sent to Rachel.

 _where r u?_ he’s about to text, but then he pauses and deletes it.

 _where are you,_ he types again.

He twists his mouth into a frown. He adds a question mark.

He doesn’t send it.

# 

* * *

Every Sunday, they go for a drive to absolutely nowhere.

Percy’s a little surprised when he spots her next to his family’s Prius, her curly hair tied back into a messy bun, wearing a sunny-yellow shirt, three fingers tucked into her denim shorts. Chalky pastels are smudged on her freckled brown skin. They silently, wordlessly enter the car; he’s in the driver’s seat and Rachel’s in the passenger’s. They don’t speak when he starts the car. They don’t speak when they pass the local grocery store or the library. Not until the car is swerving across the winding road, one side facing the blue sea.

“I think we need to talk,” Rachel says, unhurried. “About the other day.”

Percy’s grip stiffens, and his throat almost closes up when he says, “What’s there to talk about?”

“I just feel like―like we’re drifting apart.” She turns to him, her mouth physically frowning, her brows crinkled in concentration. “And I hate that.”

“We’re not―we’re not _drifting apart,”_ he spits out, a little angry at her, a little angry at himself. “You just―we just need more time, that’s all.”

“That’s not going to change anything, Percy.”

“I just―” He falters, once, twice, and then he goes silent. _He just what?_ He’s doing it again, Percy realizes. Making excuses. Looking for justification. Attempting to line up puzzle pieces that won’t connect, then declaring it solved.

He decided to ignore all the unusual little actions she’s done over the past few weeks, decided to ignore how she sharpened her pencil more than _actually_ drawing, how she wakes up at the ungodly hour of seven AM, how she wants to go to Starbucks rather than the skate park, how she just _does_ things he didn’t even know she _liked._ How she’s _different._

“It’s been difficult,” she says. Quiet. Out of the blue. “In Washington, I mean. Clarion Academy. It’s been really difficult.” Rachel lets her fingers dance across the door, drumming them rhythmically. “My dad didn’t agree, you know. He didn’t want me to come back to New York.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He wanted me to stay,” she continues. “But I―I didn’t want to.”

Percy considers this. Considers _her._ He doesn’t know much about Mr. Dare, after all, but he bets Mr. Dare knows a lot about him. “So why are you leaving New York now?”

Rachel laughs nervously. “I actually―I actually don’t know. It was just... _instinct._ But it would include using my dad's money, and I don't...”

“Oh,” Percy says, restraining himself from glancing at her. “I’m sorry for getting mad.” They stop at a red light. His feet tap against the floor anxiously when she doesn’t answer. “Do you still want to go?”

“Sort of. Not permanently.” She pauses. “But not without you.”

This time, he stares at her. “You know I can’t leave my mom―”

“I know,” she says, and again, it’s too momentary and brisk, but he notices it doesn’t grate on his nerves. At least, not a lot. Like he’s grown used to it. “Paris isn't really for me. I’ve thought about it and I decided―decided that I _am_ going to stay, and, you know, whenever you’re ready, we can...we can take a vacation. A break.”

Percy wets his chapped lips, blinking. “To Paris?”

She grins. “To Paris.”

 _Paris._ Paris is―Paris is good. It’s not permanent. Rachel seems like she’d be good in Paris, under the rosy sky, stroking her brush on blank canvases, really belonging in a haven for an artist like her. They could go together. He can make it work. They’ll always make it work.

And he remembers, unexpectedly, why they always drive around on Sundays. The first time she confessed her feelings. The first time he kissed her.

His hand hesitantly travels to hers, raises it, and kisses her knuckles gently. Rachel smiles at him, large and big and as blinding as the sun.

“I’m not leaving,” she promises him. Softly. Affectionately. “I’m _never_ leaving.”

And his heart melts, a little.

# 

* * *

The days pass.

She sleeps over, sometimes, or she goes back to her drab apartment half an hour away.

When she is at the Jacksons’ apartment, he analyzes her. Really tries to understand. To discern.

Percy finds a new coconut conditioner bottle specially made for curly hair positioned at the edge of the bathtub, several cobalt-blue hair brushes with auburn strands tangled into the bristles, polka-dotted socks left in his room, and, of course, dozens of black hair bands on the bathroom counters, some of them split and broken. He takes a peek into the kitchen and sees boxes of white jasmine tea bags and Ritz crackers and the occasional dark chocolate candies, knowing that his mom never wrote those on the shopping list.

He’s grown accustomed to seeing her relaxing in the apartment, chatting with Paul or his mom, cooing at Estelle from above her crib. Rachel still uses choppy sentences and her drawings haven’t changed. Mostly, anyway.

Percy glances at one of them, days later, and discovers a new addition has been added to that one design. The one where the girl was sitting on the windowsill, her back towards the foreground, facing a blank wall.

A boy. A boy who looks bafflingly like Percy is seated beside her, their hands clasped together. The blank wall is now a swirling sky of glittering pink and purple clouds, blue rooftops with white-bricked buildings, and a familiar, lattice tower with twinkling lights and―

And it’s Paris.

And it’s them.

And it’s _love._

**Author's Note:**

> i. anyway i got too emotional to write more of this. paris in the rain by lauv came on in the middle of writing the ending scene sooo
> 
> ii. title is from the song location by khalid. (ty for the playlist, simi 🙏 bless your heart)
> 
> iii. feel free to request ships and prompts! i'm open to a lot of ships, so don't be afraid to ask.
> 
> [tumblr](https://lovely-verisimilitude.tumblr.com)


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